The first time I visited America’s finest national park, Yosemite, I took photos of its magnificent views with the world renowned Ansel Adam’s Yosemite photographs as my inspiration. See www.anseladams.com.
But I think most of the 3.5 million persons who visit Yosemite National Park each year, point and shoot at the same photo subjects that Adams superbly worked on during the many years he lived in Yosemite. So when I visited the Park during the third week of May, 2010, I tried not to use “cut and dried” techniques in taking photos of Yosemite and yet still capture this valley’s timeless grandeur.

The first photo below and almost half of the Yosemite photos in my website (www.bacosastudios.com ) were taken through the use of a non-conventional photography technique called swiping. It is done through using a short exposure (say 1/8 second, 1/4 second, etc.) under the shutter priority mode and swiping the camera downwards while its shutters are still open. Those said steps are done through trial and error until the desired impressionist image is achieved. After executing this technique, I did not perform any post-camera photo software layer or blend adjustments on my Yosemite impressionist photos.

Half of my Yosemite photos, however, are faithful and unswiped renderings of (to quote what Ansel Adams said of Yosemite) “the very heart of the earth speaking to us”.